1. Field of the Invention
An apparatus suitable to be used in an installation ensuring the progression of long, flexible or deformable products in the form of helical turns, by means of which apparatus it is possible, at will, to regulate the maximum size of the turns, particularly with the purpose of adapting it to the thickness of the progressing product, in order to avoid any entanglement of adjoining turns.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Apparatus are known, into which is introduced a long product, generally made of metal, which product progresses in the form of helical turns suspended from one or more supporting shafts. Such apparatus are applicable to two different objects.
Those apparatus which are positioned upstream of an installation for the treatment of the product serve the purpose of an accumulator or storage unit. They permit the local and momentary stoppage of the material in front of the apparatus, during which the diameters of the turns decrease one after the other in the apparatus. It thus becomes possible to carry out a local operation on the material upstream of the apparatus, for example, the welding or soldering of two successive strips. Once this operation has been carried out, the material is reintroduced into the accumulator or storage unit, which is once again filled with large turns. It is then ready to be emptied a second time for serving a purpose similar to that previously mentioned. A storage unit of the type as indicated above is described in French Pat. No. 2 169 531.
The general purpose of the other apparatus is to permit a mechanical, chemical or electrolytic treatment of the material. In such a case, they comprise one or more successive tanks, of which the end wall is, in certain cases, passed over by a turn straddling the said wall. French Pat. No. 2 185 459 describes a treatment installation, in which the material is suspended from two parallel shafts and of which the mean linear speed of progression may be regulated to be equal with a predetermined speed of extraction of the material. In this installation, momentary or transient contacts of the material on the bottom of the tank are produced, such contacts assuring a certain degree of regularity of the turns. U.S. Pat. No. 4,026,450 describes an installation in which is made a systematic use of the transient contacts of the material, and in this case with one wall of the tank, in order to obtain an automatic regulation of the helical turns.
Even if the judicious use of the transient contacts of the material with the tank has thus made it possible to avoid the entanglement of the turns of the helix formed by the material, the installations according to the prior art, as used for the tubes, strips or wires, these two latter with a thickness greater than 1 mm, have on the contrary been proved to be unsuitable for being used with strips or wires of smaller thickness. It is important in this case that the diameter of the turns is considerably reduced, for avoiding that, on account of the pliability due to the small thickness, the turns are no longer of a regular formation and are not mixed. It would then be necessary either to use the storage units and treatment tanks adapted to the material of larger thickness and to reduce the diameter of the turns, or to use new storage units and tanks of reduced dimensions. The first solution does not permit of bringing into use the considerable progress made by the employment of transient contacts and the second would make necessary the duplication of the installations.